Category Archives: Real Estate

My husband John believes that the whole reason that the NRA is bat-shit crazy about getting everybody guns is so that bit by bit, everybody will become afraid enough of their own shadows and/or that of their neighbors that they will have no choice but to buy their own gun to protect themselves from everybody else in the US who has one and is likely to come a-callin’. And then, of course, the gun manufacturers would get even more blood money and pay more dues! It’s a win-win for the NRA and the manufacturers! The fact that the country will lose is just collateral damage.

John may be on to something. Because just today I read that there are folks in the NRA who are advocating that non-eagle-eye folks have the right to guns, too. Not only people who need corrective lenses, but folks who cannot see at all. In a less politically correct time we might have called them “Blind Folks.”

Now, now, don’t get all worried. According to Dom Raso, the guy in this video, since blind folks have such good hearing, they don’t need to see what they’re shooting at.

So the logical conclusion is that they will not just randomly start firing their guns around like irresponsible folks. (Not that there are any irresponsible gun owners out there, natch.) That makes me feel much better.

Now I grant you, there is scientific evidence that blind folks can hear better than those with better vision. Still, I’m really not at all comfortable with the idea that one of my neighbors who is vision impaired might have a gun. Well, not if he can put bullets into it and fire it, anyway.

But this discussion led me to a brilliant idea. Now I know how I will protect myself during the apocolypse and/or the rapture and/or when the guvment’s jackbooted thugs come to my house.

In the in-between time between sleep and being awake I thought I was hallucinating. Dreaming. Making shit up.

I had left the TV on in the next room so that I could hear just a little bit of a great MSNBC news show called The Last Word, hosted by Lawrence O’Donnell.

Now Laurence is an amazing guy, actually. He worked for Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (one of my all-time favorite Senators) and later for the Senate Finance Committee including during 1986 when they revamped the whole tax code. He was a writer/creator/producer for that wonderful TV show, The West Wing. He understands politics from the inside and from the outside. Lawrence is brilliant and funny and quite often finds interesting quirks in the day’s news.

But what I thought I heard as I drifted between states of consciousness must have been a dream. It couldn’t be true. It just couldn’t be. Then I promptly forgot it, which made me positive that it was just a dream.

Until just now when I bought my lunch and pulled up one of my favorite websites, CrooksandLiars.com to read while I ate. And I realized that my dream had come true.

Shit.

Mitt Romney really did compare cleaning up after Hurricane Sandy tocleaning the field up after a high school football game.

[Lawrence:] And to buff his own image as a disaster-relief specialist, Romney compared the Sandy relief effort to … his experience cleaning up the field after a high-school football game. Seriously.

[Mitt:] I remember once we had a football field at my high school. The field was covered with rubbish and paper goods from people who’d had a big celebration there at the game. And there was a group of us there assigned to clean it up. And I thought, ‘how are we going to clean up all the mess on this football field?’ There were just a few of us. And the person responsible for organizing the effort said, ‘Just line up along the yard lines. You go between the goal line and the 10-yard line, and the next person between the 10 and 20, and just walk down and do your lane. And if everybody cleans their lanes, we’ll get it done.’ And so today, we’re cleaning one lane if you will.

You’ll have to click on the CrooksandLiars post above for the video. I can’t embed.

Somewhere, deep down inside of me, I thought that perhaps I was wrong about Mitt being an oblivious heartless bastard who believes, along with Annie-poo, that he has suffered. You remember how bad it was for him and Ann while in college and law/business school because he had to sell some of his stock portfolio and eat tuna while living in a basement apartment. Perhaps I was missing something in his personality. Perhaps he isn’t really such a dick.

But no. I was wrong in being charitable to Mitt. And (sadly if there is any chance at all of his being elected) I was right – he really is a dick.

Excuse me now. I have to go find a brick wall to slam my head against.

Elections Matter — Please don’t let this guy get into the White House without a tour guide.

Some areas are prepared for nasty weather events. Given that the Greater Washington DC area closes down with snow flurries, well, it won’t be pretty here, even though other areas will likely get hit harder.

Still, I can safely say that:

I will be powerless for many days.

I will have no running water until the power comes back on sometime around Thanksgiving.

Trees will fall on my once wooded lot and I will have to remortgage to pay for the cleanup. Then I will plant wheat.

I will be unable to flush the toilet for a very long time which is especially pleasant if you live with Crohn’s Disease.

I will be unable to shower for days.

We will not relocate to a hotel because it would upset our dog, Cooper, too much. Cooper is very old and has been dying any day now for nearly three years. He will bury John and I when we smell so bad that he mistakes us for dead animals.

I will not be pleasant to sit next to until sometime after the election when I promise to shower.

I can also safely say that I will be going completely out of my minds being unable to check polls, hear about what is happening in the run-up to the election and what stupid things Ann and Mitt Romney, and Pauly Ryan have said lately.

But you won’t have to suffer, unless you too are in Sandy’s way. When you are looking for your bizarre little bits of what the crazies on the left are doing, here are two of my favorite locations:

Meanwhile, until the storm starts, I will be at the grocery store. Handing out copies of this picture:

You gonna vote for a guy with even less heart than Bush???

* * *

To all my friends who are also in Sandy’s way, good luck with the storm. Remember, that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. And of course, by “stronger” I mean more fragrant.

To all of you who are not impacted by Sandy, please go to our websites frequently so that we will feel the love later, when we have electricity and want to know that our bloggin’ buddies have been by to help keep our stats up.

And Sandy of Sandylikeabeach? I expect you here by Friday with a chain saw!

Many of you think that I am a communist with socialist sympathies. Or a socialist with communist proclivities. Or that I want to take from the rich and give to the poor. That I have fantasies of becoming the next Mother Theresa or at least Madonna. The singer, not the, you know, Madonna.

Nope. Not me at all.That gum would be in my earrings

But it’s not at all true. I’m not a socialist, I’m a liberal. Someday the GOP will understand the difference between a liberal and a socialist. But certainly not before it’s convenient. And definitely not before November.

Personally, I work hard and am pretty well paid for my efforts. I like that.

I also like the fact that my husband works less hard and is paid even better. Of course that would piss me off royally if I didn’t get to spend more than my share of that haul.

That said, well, I know I’ve been lucky, especially when it comes to the folks I’ve worked for. Yes, I’ve been incredibly lucky in bosses. None of them has asked me to do anything illegal, unethical or even too terribly yucky. Stupid sometimes, annoying at others, but legal and honest and ethical. And none have ever threatened me.

So when I read this article about a very different type of boss, well I saw red.

Not exactly like this,but it was definitely red.

Did you hear about David Siegel, the owner of Westgate Resorts? His estimated net worth is close to $2 Billion. Yeah. That’s with a “B.”

You may recall him from the stories about his house, Versailles:

A quaint little cottage, ain’t it?A mere 90,000 sq. ft.

Here’s the ballroom.

Doesn’t YOUR house have a ballroom?

David made his money selling Time Shares. You know, those “must have” vacation resort scams? My parents owned one. Thanks, David. Can you say “total rip off”? I bet you say it a lot.

Now David’s worried. And that’s never a good thing when all that money is at stake. You see, David is worried that President Obama may get re-elected. And David’s worried that if President Obama is re-elected, he might have to pay more taxes. So he threatened his 7,000 employees, telling them that they may just not have a job if Obama gets 4 more years.

Actually, David held back. He didn’t cross that line. No sirreee Bob. He didn’t tell the folks dependent on him who to vote for! That would be bullying! That would be unethical! That would be illegal!

Here’s what he did say. I’ll use his words, not mine. Here’s what David A. Siegel, Billionnaire, said in an email sent to all of his employees on Monday:

As your employer, I can’t tell you whom to vote for, and I certainly wouldn’t interfere with your right to vote for whomever you choose. In fact, I encourage you to vote for whomever you think will serve your interests the best.

Good start, don’t you think. Then he explained to his workers just how hard the life of a billionaire can be:

I eat, live, and breathe this company every minute of the day, every day of the week. There is no rest. There is no weekend. There is no happy hour.

I admit I’d be ticked off if there was no happy hour. Imagine.

And then David mentioned that his employees might just want to think carefully about who they vote for come November:

If any new taxes are levied on me, or my company, as our current President plans, I will have no choice but to reduce the size of this company. Rather than grow this company I will be forced to cut back. This means fewer jobs, less benefits and certainly less opportunity for everyone.

So, when you make your decision to vote, ask yourself, which candidate understands the economics of business ownership and who doesn’t? Whose policies will endanger your job? Answer those questions and you should know who might be the one capable of protecting and saving your job. [Emphasis mine.]

David on his Golden Throne

Talk about folks who feel “Entitled”!

So, in spite of the fact that the Presidency offers no such powers, I’m going to lobby hard for something. Nationalization of David Siegel’s assets.

Yup, I’m going to work towards nationalization of the assets of this asshole. Just the one asshole. We could use a new National Park in Central Florida, wouldn’t you say? Disney gets so crowded these days. We can call it “OverTheTop-Land.”

Of course, if I hear of more of those buckaroo billionaires screwing with people’s right to vote, well, I might just rethink just how keen I am on nationalization. Because you know what they say about socialists/communists. Once they start marching, all the dominoes fall.

Elections matter. And nobody has the right to tell their employees how or for whom to vote.

[And if anybody seriously thinks that I am either a socialist or a communist, or that I think there is any authority for anyone to nationalize the assets of anybody in the country, you are reading the wrong blog.]

As you can probably tell, I don’t normally struggle with making my opinion known. But the last few days I’ve been so overwhelmed by the crap that the GOP is spewing that, well, I went into “outrage overload.” It’s an epidemic amongst thinking Americans everywhere.

But after reading Eleanor Tomczyk of How The Hell Did I End Up Here, I was reminded of someone I knew slightly when I worked at a law school in my younger days.

Mark was member of the “Lawyers for Christ” group while at law school, and was known as a deeply devout, incredibly pleasant guy. We weren’t close friends, but he was a nice guy.

Well, Mark is now a Federal Judge! It’s pretty cool, isn’t it? I mean when folks you know make good?

One night when Mark was in DC, I was invited to a dinner of some of his law school classmates who were also friends of mine. I came away in shock. Because this good man who had been the bible studies leader at law school, the number one Christian sharing his beliefs and values, well, Mark had changed.

“I went back home and studied my soul, studied my bible,” Mark said. “And I came away knowing that Christianity, in fact, all the beliefs Jesus preached on, well, they’re based on property rights. In fact,Jesus preached property rights.”

Huh?

Yes, Mark, the man who had believed that Jesus preached love, preached helping the poor, preached paying Caesar what is Caesar’s now had, well, a different line of thinking. One that was way more compatible with his expanding wallet, waistband and increasing prominence as a fat-cat GOP member.

Holy Shit.

Available for $3.95 from Zazzle.com. It’s their picture.

Or should I say “Holy Bullshit”?

Stephen Colbert on Jesus and Our Christian Nation

“If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn’t help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus is just as selfish as we are or we’ve got to acknowledge that he commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition. And then admit that we just don’t want to do it.” – Stephen Colbert

Mark, Federal Judge Mark, that is, went with Stephen’s first option – choosing to believe that Jesus was just as selfish.

Me, I believe that Jesus would be a liberal Democrat. Because the difference in the parties can be summed up one way:

I’m talking seriously daring as a group activity. Because now that it’s summertime, well, we all need to P-A-R-T-Y. And we need to do it all together. It’ll be a blast.

Here, you go first. Drive across this bridge.

Whittier Bridge on I-95 in Northern Mass. (Thanks Google)

It’s the twin of this bridge, and in roughly the same condition as this bridge was just before, well, you know.

Minnesota Bridge collapse. (Google Image)

Wouldn’t it be especially fun to drive across that? The adrenaline rush would be amazing. Especially when you drive across it real slow, with thousands of other similar thrill seekers. A hoot-and-a-half?

And you don’t need to just play on that bridge. Nope. A study published last year by Transportation for America found:

One in Nine Bridges in America “Structurally Deficient, Potentially Dangerous”

So chances are you won’t have to go too far to find a place to play this game. Here’s a link to a map that will show you where. We can get thrills every single day!

Across the country, there is the cry of “cut-cut-cut,” by which the town criers mean “gut-gut-gut.” And it is giving everyone in the country multiple opportunities to tempt fate. To see just how thoroughly we can decimate our services and our infrastructure before calamity strikes.

Who needs thrills from extreme sports when reality is always near?

Have you heard about what happened recently when reality struck in Colorado Springs, Colorado?

Colorado Springs is considered the “birthplace” of The Taxpayer Bill of Rights, which has spread like wildfire throughout the country, in part spawning the Tea Party movement. It is also the home of “Focus on the Family,” you know, that bunch of progressives whose fearless leader claims “was the tea party before the tea party was cool.”

Last year, there was an election for the job of Colorado Springs Mayor. Nine candidates ran. Six of them signed Grover Norquist’s “no taxes” pledge. (The very same pledge that has stymied the U.S. Congress.) One candidate, Richard Skorman, didn’t sign the pledge. His reasoning?

“What if the city got hit by a major wildfire?”

But reasonableness and forward thinking no longer wins votes it seems.

Mr. Skorman lost, and the candidate who won, had signed Grover’s pledge. And “cut” was just what new Mayor Steve Bach did. They laid off policemen and firefighters. Sold assets. Cut-cut-cut-cut-cut. Yahoo!

Oh, but have you read the news lately? Well, it seems that the city of Colorado Springs got hit by a major wildfire! Who could have imagined that that would ever happen? I mean, it’s a freak occurrence, right? It never happens. Right? Who knew? Who could have predicted it?

Google Image

Now that the unimaginable has happened, well, they’ve called in the National Guard because, due to (1) the catastrophe, (2) the reduced police force; (3) the reduced firefighting resources; and (4) LOOTING, they need help. Yes, there aren’t enough firefighters to protect the town, folks are looting, and there aren’t enough police to handle the crimes.

Who would ever have guessed? Oh, yeah. One of the candidates guessed. My bad.

When did we become a country so unwilling to work together, to pool our resources to prevent problems and to tackle the unforeseen? When did paying your fare share become something that only fools and progressives do? When did working together to build a better country become something for patsies?

Oh yeah. 1980. I remember it well.

Remember? “The government IS the problem.”

There is real need to work together, chip in — in cash and sweat equity. That’s how America was built. That’s how it became a great nation. Because that’s what is really at stake in our political philosophy and the folks who are unwilling to pay more reasonable taxes (and by folks I mean the rich bastards who can afford to pay way more. I’m talking to you, Mitt and to your buddies).

Are we a country that builds or a country that crumbles. That collapses. That burns.